


[waiting for] a just reparation

by orangeade



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Exposition, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-05
Updated: 2013-04-05
Packaged: 2017-12-07 12:51:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/748702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orangeade/pseuds/orangeade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Starvation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	[waiting for] a just reparation

Eponine: starved.

Starved of food; she went to the food bank to remedy that. Somehow she could never pick up quite enough, and much of what she got went to her ravenous and ungrateful parents. Ep got the rest. It totaled out to even less than not enough.

Starved of kindness: but this she encountered on occasion in the new lodger at the inn—Marius Pontmercy, he called himself. He was kind to her; kind as the rich went, anyway—and oh, she knew he was rich, though he tried to hide behind the facade of poverty he’d created for himself. A man can’t cleanse himself of money. The smell lingers, and the indigent, who cling to every quarter they find, their noses pick it up quick.

Starved of love: and this, she suffered from completely. There isn’t a food bank equivalent for those starved of love, though if the world were fair, there would be. Nobody deserves to be so unloved. But Eponine was, and through little fault of her own. Of course she could be slightly unhinged; but how could you, how could you blame her, when all she had known her entire life was total starvation? Her mother had only cared for her superficially, to compare her to that Cosette; her father never cared at all. Marius Pontmercy, whom she clung to now, would not love her back. Nobody on the street even gave Eponine a second glance, as she looked ugly to them even cleaned-up, even dressed-up, on the rare occasions dear Ep could manage it. We can attribute this to a certain prejudice on the part of the rather better-off passerby. Eponine’s skin wasn’t like theirs; she was browned where they were ivory, and regardless of how hard she scrubbed, she couldn’t get rid of that brownness. It clung to her, much like her utter poverty did, and that worked in her mind, worked against her until she’d gone a little bit off. She clung to Monsieur Marius, her rock, always there; she built a life with him in her head, to give her a little hope to hang on to; but once that was gone, so Ep went, her life the epitome of the wretched, the debased, the miserable.


End file.
